Juliet, Naked (and some other Nick Hornby books that you should read)

I'm in the midst of a project that is so... I can't think of a word other than nerdy... that I think it's probably only in reaction to my recent experience of going four days without reading a single book. While I'm waiting for my name to come up on the hold list for Nick Hornby's new book, Juliet, Naked, I'm reading the two of his I've not read before (Speaking with the Angel and How to Be Good) just so I can say I've read them all.

I've admitted before to having an author crush on Hornby.  I'd like to share all the reasons why but, in the midst of my pile of Hornby books, I don't feel like I should write a grocery list, let alone an explanation of the way someone writes.  It's not that his writing is particularly intimidating; there's a deceptive accessibility to it.  He's easy to read, and it's only when I realize that I've read a paragraph a few times to myself to let it soak in, or felt the urge to read aloud to whoever happens to be next to me, that I realize that in his straightforward style he's managed to choose the exact right words to convey the way a character feels and to make it honest and relatable.  He also has a delicious sense of humor like a good piece of toast: dry and wry.

If you're interested in non-fiction, I recommend starting with The Polysyllabic Spree if you're into books, Fever Pitch if you're a sports fan, and Songbook if you're into music (Hornby is a former music critic for The New Yorker).  If you're more of a fiction fan, his most well-known books are probably High Fidelity and About a Boy, largely because of the movies they spawned.  However, I'd also point you to A Long Way Down, the story of four unlikely friends who met after unwittingly foiling each other's plans to commit suicide in the same place at the same time, or Slam, about a teenager who turns to his poster of skateboarder Tony Hawk for advice when his ex-girlfriend announces she's pregnant. 

The Road

The film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's award-winning book, The Road, is set to be released in November. This post-apocolyptic story centers around a man and his son trying to survive in an unforgiving world. Unlike many of his other novels, McCarthy tells a tale that includes love, in this case the love of a father for his son.  Some scenes are heartwarming while some really tug at the heartstrings.  This is a vision of a desolate future without the special effects.  The focus is on the human experience and survival.

If The Road interests you, then try out McCarthy's popular Border Trilogy. The trilogy starts with All the Pretty Horses and moves on to The Crossing and Cities on the Plain. Of course, you are probably already familiar with McCarthy's work as one of his previous works, No Country for Old Men, was made into the Academy Award winning film.  Check out this link for more of McCarthy's works that are available at the library.

A dare, a podcast, and a book

Last week, I was dared to do something I wasn't sure I could get through.  The dare?  Go for the remainder of the week without reading a book.  Not one.  For four days.  I couldn't think of the last time I had gone 12 hours without, let alone 96.  But, like the kids in A Christmas Story, I'm not one to back down from a triple-dog dare, no matter how stupid, so I accepted.

I did great for the first leg of the dare and even started to gloat about how silly the dare was; I could quit reading any time I wanted.  However, by the second day, things were getting a little shaky.  I kept having to pass the library basket full of books calling out to me, wondering why I had abandoned them.  I'm convinced that somewhere in the third day a book called out, "C'mon!  Just read one page!"

Instead, I turned to my podcast of "This American Life," my favorite show on NPR (if you've never heard it, WCPL does have Season One and Season Two of the Showtime version of the show).  Cruelly, the week's show was titled "The Book That Changed Your Life."  The entire hour was devoted to the impact of books on the lives of individuals.  It got me thinking: if I was having a problem going four days without a book, surely there's a book that I could say changed my life.  The more I thought about it, though (and, determined to win that stupid dare, I had plenty of free time to think), I realized I couldn't point to one book with as much impact on me as, say, the works of  Laura Ingalls Wilder did on a young woman who moved from New York City to De Smet, South Dakota because of Wilder's books.  What I did realize, however, is the overall impact of books on me.  Whether they add information to my "random bits of trivia" file, prompt me to think about things in a new way, or entertain me, books have been a constant for me. 

Now that the dare is over (I'm not sure whether to be proud that I made it, but I did), I'm diving back into the library basket.  I just finished Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America, an amazing book about about one man's work to end poverty by transforming Harlem and the lives of the children in it.  Canada's approach is dubbed the "conveyor belt," making sure children are given access to services and are expected to meet higher educational demands.  As a result, 100% of the children in his kindergarten program have tested at or above test levels for the past six years, a result that is notable in any school district, let alone in the midst of Harlem.  It was an inspiring book about a group of people who face incredibly hard challenges every day.  It put the challenge of my four-day experience without books in perspective...still, I enjoyed reading the book so much, it affirmed that it's not a challenge I'll be repeating any time soon.

Can You Walk on Water?

I'm going to do the unthinkable: I'm going to tell you about a book that the library doesn't own, but should. (If you're already shuddering, don't worry: I've just written up the purchase request.) By the way, the book is nonfiction, and if you're a writer, it's essential reading. It's called Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution by Derrick Jensen, and it's probably one of the best books on the craft that I've ever come across (and believe me, I 've read plenty). Now if you're not familiar with Derrick Jensen, here's the rundown: he's an environmental activist who has written extensively and passionately about saving the planet from the destructive bent of civilization, so be forewarned that he brings many of his beliefs and opinions to the table in Walking on Water. You don't, however, have to agree with any of them in order to get something out of this book. Frankly, you don't even have to be a writer. Jensen draws on his experience teaching creative writing at Eastern Washington University and Pelican Bay State Prison, and the lessons he brings forth in each chapter of Walking on Water underscore his belief that "the only real job of any teacher, especially a writing teacher, is to help students find themselves. Everything else is either a distraction, or at best, window dressing." Crack open this book and you'll find gems like the following: "I say, 'There are a hundred people inside of each of us who can write. There's the bitter old man, and the lonely old woman. The happy old woman or man tired but satisfied with life. The ecstatic young man, the gleeful little girl. The angry woman. They all have strong opinions, and they're all inside each one of us. Unfortunately, the only one who can't write is the one we wear on our faces all the time. The polite one. The bland one. The one who wants approval. The one who hedges every strong opinion, every strong impulse....'" You get the picture. All along the way, Jensen shares his rather unorthodox--and entertaining, I might add--methods of teaching, all designed to help his students "trigger passions strong enough that they lose self-consciousness and fall completely into the feelings, the words, the messages" they want to convey. And by the end of the book, Jensen shows them that maybe what they once thought impossible is perhaps within their grasp. That they can accomplish miracles. That they--and you--can indeed walk on water.

2009 Nobel Prize in Literature Awarded

The Swedish Academy has been busy this week announcing Nobel Prizes for people far brighter than I can even comprehend. This year's Nobel Prize for Literature winner is Herta Muller, a Romanian-born German writer who has written extensively on oppression under Ceausescu's dictatorship. Her work, said the Academy, "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." As with many of the Nobel Laureates, I can't claim to have heard of her prior to the award's announcement. However, it does add another author on my list of books to read.

If you're interested in catching up on the work of other Nobel Laureates, try some of these authors in our collection:

Doris Lessing - 2007 Nobel Laureate
Orhan Pamuk - 2006 Nobel Laureate
Harold Pinter - 2005 Nobel Laureate
Elfriede Jelinek - 2004 Nobel Laureate
J. M. Coetzee - 2003 Nobel Laureate
V. S. Naipaul - 2001 Nobel Laureate
Gunter Grass - 1999 Nobel Laureate
Najib Mahfuz - 1988 Nobel Laureate

Man Booker Prize Winner Announced!

Tuesday October 6, 2009 the Man Booker Prize winner was announced--and the winner is: Wolf Hall by English author Hilary Mantel! This 650-page historical monster is about the 16Th-century political maneuvering in the court of Henry VIII. The author retells the story of Henry VIII and Ann Boleyn from the point of view of Thomas Cromwell. Another interesting thing about this book is that it was favored to win by the oddsmakers (bookies, gamblers, etc.) and it did! The last time this happened was in 2002 when Life of Pi won.

For other non-British or Commonwealth authors who have had their work published or largely translated into English there is the Man Booker International Prize, which was awarded to Alice Munro this year for her body of work. So if you like historical fiction or just a good story then try Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Also, try one of the following authors that were runner-ups for the Man Booker Prize:

The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt

Summertime by J. M. Coetzee

The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries

One of my favorite films is a little known gem of the iconic duo, Merchant-Ivory. The film,
A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, is the semi-autobiographical life sketch of Kaylie Jones, daughter of the classic American novelist, James Jones. Ms. Jones, herself an author, penned the text from which the film was made (same title). I read the book after I saw the film and was particularly attracted to the family’s experience of raising ex-patriot children, having had the same experience. Our children were raised in the country of Italy, where they matriculated for many years in Italian schools. The Jones family did likewise, but in the country of France. Where the Jones (Willis) family life takes a particularly interesting twist is in the adoption of a young French boy, whom they call ‘Billy’, after the dad in the film, Bill Willis.

Known for beautiful cinematography, this Merchant-Ivory film, is captivating to look at. The cast of characters are also beautiful ~ Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey, Leelee Sobieski. Such beauty can make it difficult to see, at first view, the ugliness that lies under the surface. When the family returns to the U.S. for medical treatment for the dad who develops a serious heart condition, the process of re-patriating brings about a painful but necessary time of discovery ~ both for the family and for each member individually.

Not wishing to be a spoiler, I will say that the film left me hanging in the sense that I wondered what happened to the young girl and boy in particular, in terms of their future. Did they stay in the U.S. or return to France? What happened to the parents?

The film was produced in 1998, several years after the family returned to the U.S. Just released this month is Kaylie Jone’s actual autobiography, Lies My Mother Never Told Me, which picks up where "A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries" left off. I read the book in its entirety over the weekend and was not disappointed.

Though Ms. Jones’ memoir does not flinch from sharing very intimate details of her family and their struggles, especially regarding her relationship with her mother, it also contains some interesting detail about her famous father’s writing style, how he wrote, how he developed a story line.

As a war veteran himself, the storylines of From Here to Eternity and A Thin Red Line were written from personal experience. The family had several famous writers as friends: Richard Wright, Irwin Shaw, James Baldwin, William Styron, to name just a few, many of whom were a part of the Jones’ family life in France. Though the life of this woman may seem glamorous, it was not without its pain. It seems she found a kindred spirit in the life of another daughter of a famous writer, Jill Faulkner Summers. She shares this quote from the daughter of William Faulkner:

It was just before my birthday and I knew that Pappy was getting ready to start one of these bouts. I went to him – the only time I ever did – and said, “Please don’t start drinking.” And he was already well on his way, and he turned to me and said, “You know, no one remembers Shakespeare’s child.”

In the Queue

Invisible

by Paul Auster

When Adam Walter meets Frenchman Rudolf Born and his seductive girlfriend, Margot, he is caught up in a perverse triangle that leads to an act of violence that changes the course of his life.

The Lacuna

by Barbara Kingsolver

Harrison William Shepherd is a man caught between two worlds. Born in the United States, he is raised in a series of homes in Mexico where his social-climbing mother pursues rich men and barely tolerates his presence.

The American Civil War: A Military History

by John Keegan

Keegan offers a unique portrait of the American Civil War, known in some circles as the War of Northern Aggression. He emphasizes the major part geography played in the war and compares the conflict to previous wars.